


Hierarchy of Needs

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Apocalypse, Cannibalism, Consent Issues, F/F, Feudalism, Gore, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Murder, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Sexual Violence, Sibling Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:47:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1204987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the end of the world and everyone's immediate needs have changed. It's also Hannibal's chance to have everything he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Physiological

**Author's Note:**

> Maslow created the theory that humans' needs are ordered in a hierarchy. Each level must be achieved before rising to the next. According to Maslow's theory, when a human being ascends the levels of the hierarchy having fulfilled the needs in the hierarchy, one may eventually achieve self-actualization.

_**Physiological: Air, food, water, excretion, sex, sleep, homeostasis** _

_**Physiological needs are the physical requirements for human survival. If these requirements are not met, the human body cannot function properly and will ultimately fail.** _

It became apparent that something was wrong when no one came to bring them the evening meal. Or breakfast the next morning. No guards. Nothing. It was eight days before anyone came down to the basement at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Four days after the power went out and the water stopped running. 

Will filled the sink, and drank that on the first day. He drank the water in the toilet on the second day. On the third day, he drank his own urine and made a noose out of his sheets. His fellow inmates – the ones who were still alive – sobbed and moaned in the dark. Will waited, quietly.

It was Hannibal who came for him on the fourth day with water and a hacksaw. He was wearing dress pants tucked into sturdy boots and the sleeves of his button-down shirt were rolled up. Hannibal still had a fucking waistcoat on but there was a homemade knife belt strapped across his chest and blood under his nails.

He stood just out of Will’s reach and waited for Will to drag himself to his feet and stagger over to the bars. Will’s vision blurred and went dark at the edges, and he clung to his cage in order to remain upright. His stomach was cramped with hunger and his kidneys ached.

“Sadist,” Will said, without rancor.

Hannibal smiled his little half-smile. “I’m afraid you were right about me,” he said, not bothering to deny it.

“Abigail?” Will asked, but he already knew the answer to that, and the rest of the names poured out of him. “Marissa Schurr, Cassie Boyle, Georgia Madchen…” He rested his forehead against the cool metal of the bars. “You knew about the encephalitis. You killed Doctor Sutcliffe. You’re the copycat and you framed me.”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, waiting.

“You’re the Chesapeake Ripper,” Will said, “although those are just the kills you display. There are others.” Eye contact was much easier with Hannibal than it was with other people. Probably because Will still couldn’t see past Hannibal’s white-knuckle control of his emotions. Or maybe it was just that there wasn’t anything behind his eyes at all. “They’re not surgical trophies,” Will murmured.

“No,” said Hannibal. His voice was kind.

Will couldn’t help but laugh even though it hurt. He didn’t have enough moisture left in his body to cry, so his eyes burned and ached. It was all just a bad punch line to a cosmic joke. “Hannibal the cannibal,” he said just to watch Hannibal’s displeasure. His legs were shaking underneath him and Will had to focus to stay upright. “What do you want? Come to see the last act before the curtain falls?”

“You are my friend,” Hannibal said, in a disapproving sort of way. “I came here to free you.” When Will had nothing to say to that he pursed his lips and carried on. “I believe there are three options for us: You come with me because you want to. I make you come with me. Or, you try to strangle yourself with that bed sheet before I can saw through the bars and make you come with me.”

Will closed his eyes. “How bad is it out there?”

He startled when Hannibal reached through the bars and gently cupped the back of his head but he didn’t pull away. “The world is not ending, Will Graham,” Hannibal said, close enough to bite, close enough to kiss. “It is changing, but it has changed before, for you, for me also. We survived then. We can survive now.”

In the silence that fell between them, Will could hear the other inmates begging Hannibal to let them out, threatening, trying to appeal to emotions that just weren’t there. He could feel his body shutting down, and the callouses on Hannibal’s hand catching in his hair. 

Hannibal was strong, the bars weren’t that thick, and it could take up to twenty minutes to strangle to death.

“Better the devil you know,” Will said. “Get me out of here.”

It took Hannibal fifteen minutes of unhurried sawing and a spare blade to remove enough bars for Will to slip through the gap. He could have done it in ten, maybe eight, if he’d had to. Will watched while slowly drinking the water and chewing on the dry, bland crackers that Hannibal had produced. 

Hannibal had discarded his knives, his waistcoat, even his shirt, and he was sweating although the heating was off and the basement was cold. Academically, Will knew the Ripper was strong. Watching Hannibal remove the bars from his cell was just confirmation of that. The veins in his shoulders and biceps were raised and his forearms were thick with muscle from cooking – probably also from murder – but his stomach was soft, middle age and gourmet food taking their toll. 

There were scars on his chest and shoulders; old and white, nearly invisible until his skin became flushed from exertion. They were wrap-arounds from his back, curved around his ribs in thin sharp lines and in broad stripes. Hannibal also had blood spatter on his right side, between shoulder and neck to go with the blood under his nails. 

“You have a really lousy sense of humour,” Will said, so he wouldn’t gulp the water and make himself sick. Also so he wouldn’t try to see Hannibal’s design. He didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to feel it, and he didn’t want to sympathize.

One of Hannibal’s eyebrows raised fractionally. “Puns are one of the oldest forms of wit and require a broad vocabulary to understand. Consider also that English is my fifth language.”

“Vantar,” Will muttered. 

“French was my fourth,” Hannibal said. “And your pronunciation is appalling.”

“Not in Louisiana,” Will said. “Anyway, you were only punning because you couldn’t just say, ‘the main is people, the starter was people, it’s all people, I’m a cannibal.’” It came out as though he was joking with Hannibal. Will hadn’t intended it to be that way but Hannibal just smirked at him. He looked away, down at the bottle of water that he was crushing in his hands.

With a final grunt of exertion, Hannibal pulled away the last bar. “My affect is extremely blunted,” he pointed out. “When something rouses an emotion I take great pleasure in it because it is so rare, be it humour or something else.” 

Instead of waiting for Will to come out of the cell, Hannibal climbed in. Will flinched back but Hannibal simply pulled the pillowcase off Will’s bed and used it to wipe away the sweat as well as the blood on his neck. Now he looked offended. “If I wanted to hurt you, Will, I would have done so long ago.” 

The scars on his back were ugly and multitudinous. They’d stretched over time and Will estimated that Hannibal had been pre-pubescent when they had been inflicted. He’d seen too many little bodies so marked not to understand how badly Hannibal had been beaten or for how many years the abuse had taken place.

Hannibal slipped back between the bars and redressed, leaving Will to make his own way out of the cell. “You’re a sadist,” Will said again, stumbling. Hannibal didn’t offer any help. Insanely, Will was grateful. He didn’t need sympathy for a child long grown clouding his judgement on a man who had done so many terrible things. “You had me locked away in here. You let my brain cook in my skull. You let me believe I’d killed people. You enjoy seeing me hurting.”

Hannibal still looked offended. “Not at the hands of others. And not fatally.”

It didn’t bear thinking about, the ways that Hannibal did want to see him suffer. It was too easy to slip into Hannibal’s head: he’d spent so long trying to see the Ripper that it was hard _not_ to. He’d seen a Wendigo, a creature born in winter, of freezing winds and famine. Always ravenous. Hannibal’s eyes were covetous over Will’s face and body and Will couldn’t tell what sort of hunger it was.

“Gee,” Will said, his voice strangled in his throat. “Thanks.”

They passed the other prisoners, Will closer to the wall, Hannibal between him and the cells. Will tried very hard not to feel grateful. The prisoners they were leaving to their deaths howled after them. If Hannibal had had a gun, Will might have asked him to at least save them from dying of dehydration. But he didn’t, so Will put his head down and his shoulders up and kept walking.

Time warped oddly, as it had always done, long before his illness, and Will fell into Hannibal’s patterns, able now to see the design.

Some terrible winter in Communist Lithuania, Hannibal, the proverbial orphan, lost his family. Whether willingly or not, Hannibal had consumed human flesh and become the Wendigo. Wendigo or not, Hannibal was still a small boy, his loving comrades sent him to an orphanage where he worked, and hungered, and the adults who should have protected him instead beat the rest of his humanity out of him. But the creature grew, and so did the pit in his stomach.

He would have committed his first murders around the age of fifteen or sixteen and while it soothed the rage born out of adolescence, it didn’t fill the gnawing hunger in the ways he’d hoped it would. He evolved, began to eat his kills, kept his need for violence and pain at bay by becoming a surgeon. As he grew and matured and his hormones subsided, Hannibal found himself unable to feel much of anything. Cannibalism brought him a small amount of pleasure, but the murders roused in him real emotions. He felt, and his feelings were expressed in blood and cruel humour. 

He would have been nearing forty when the hunger grew again. Hannibal’s midlife crisis. Most serial killers began here, when they reached that point in life where men are expected to have accomplished something, to have created something, to have their legacy secured. He changed professions, feeding his sadism with emotional suffering rather than physical. Despite his best efforts he grew bored and restless. He found himself wanting to send messages to law enforcement, taunting them, drawing their fire just to keep things interesting. Instead, when he had almost let need override self-preservation, Will had appeared in his life.

Now he could watch the FBI from the inner sanctum. He had leading profilers and psychiatrists dining at his table while he delivered delicious pun after pun. Every conversation left him sated. But more than that, when he saw Will – who could understand him, whose empathy caused him to suffer so exquisitely, whose resolve he could never quite break – he felt something more. 

Will bit his lip until it bled, pain startling him out of his reverie. He stumbled on the first step out of the basement, but this time Hannibal’s hand was at his elbow, helping him along.

“It’s strange,” Hannibal said. “You are rude, sarcastic, and ill-mannered.” 

Will grimaced. “Please, don’t hold back on my account.”

“If you would let me finish,” Hannibal said. 

When Will’s strength failed him, Hannibal slung Will’s arm over his shoulder. He ignored Will’s instinctive flinch away and half-carried him up the stairs without comment. They hit the main floor but Hannibal didn’t let go. The sunlight streaming in through the broken windows was blinding. Hannibal kept walking even though Will could barely see as his eyes watered from pain. 

“You are also an utterly unique creature and to lose that would be the greatest crime of all.”

“Unique like you?” Will asked, jaw clenching.

Hannibal paused at the door, letting Will stand on his own so he could unsheathe two knives. “I am not so narcissistic,” he said. “Unique in ways that compliment me.”

Will’s vision slowly cleared and outside, through broken windows and torn curtains, he could see Baltimore wreathed in thick clouds of smoke. Daylight filtered through, red like dried blood, like Hannibal’s eyes. Will thought he might have died in his cell. He died of thirst and now he was in Hell, getting a personal tour by the devil himself.

“It’s a brave new world, Will,” Hannibal said, spinning one knife in his hand with lazy ease. “Embrace it,” he said, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vantar = braggart in Cajun French


	2. Safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Doctor Du Maurier,” someone said from the doorway. “I am so pleased you aren’t sick.” - Or, Bedelia makes a devil's bargain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bedelia's misquote is from The Prince, by Machiavelli. I have evaded stating where, exactly, it is they go. I can tell you that it wasn’t California, and so I have moved the Castello di Amorosa to suit my purposes. Also, my blurbs on the Hierarchy of Needs are mostly cribbed from Wikipedia. Hannibal ad portas is an old saying which means Hannibal (is) at the gates.

**_Safety: security of body, resources, health, property, the family_ **

**_With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs take precedence and dominate behavior._ **

_Nine days previously_

As soon as the disease began to spread there were fingers pointed at every nation. Had it mutated from Ebola in Uganda? Had it been unleashed from a lab in Canada? Who was patient zero and how was the disease carried?

In the end it didn’t matter because there was no vaccine and only thirty percent of the population had natural immunity. Another ten percent survived the disease but were left with a ravenous hunger, a rabies-like infection and were a new danger unto themselves.

As the world fell apart on her television, and outside her window, Bedelia took out her most expensive bottle of wine. She had been saving it for a special occasion and the end of the world seemed like a good enough time. She let it breathe before pouring herself a glass because as far as she was concerned there was still time for a little civility before it all went to shit. After the second glass, she found her emergency pack of cigarettes and lit one in the middle of her beautiful living room. 

By the time Bedelia had finished the bottle and started in on another one – this one without using a glass – she had smoked half the pack and made her way to her bedroom. For a long time she had been of the opinion that the NRA maniacs were a greater threat than any criminal, but things had become dangerous long before the world ended. There was a safe in her bedroom and Bedelia put her mother’s wedding ring on her right hand and took out her gun.

Bedelia loaded the gun carefully, pausing every now and then to work on her bottle of wine. A lightweight .38 Special revolver wasn’t going to protect her against the disease but she doubted, at this point, that she was going to get sick. The revolver wouldn’t do her much good against the riots and mass hysteria, or the ten percent everyone was calling zombies. But she wasn’t planning on using it for self-defence.

“Doctor Du Maurier,” someone said from the doorway. “I am so pleased you aren’t sick.”

Bedelia spun around, wobbling on her favourite pair of heels, and aimed the gun at the intruder. Hannibal, still as implacable as ever, raised his hands to show there was nothing in them. It wasn’t comforting and she took a step backwards as he came towards her.

“You’ve been smoking,” Hannibal said, wrinkling his nose. “And you’re drunk.”

Bedelia didn’t lower the gun. “What do you want?” She had been Hannibal’s psychiatrist for many years and mostly it had been like talking to a brick wall disguised by a mirror. Worse, once Will Graham had caught his attention. Then it was like watching a wolf circle a wounded faun and asking the wolf politely to deny its nature.

Some weight had been lifted from him. Apparently it took the end of the world for Hannibal to let go a little. There had always been something off about Hannibal but Bedelia had worked with sociopaths in high places, important men who got therapy instead of jail time. As far as she’d known, Hannibal genuinely tried to be a better, more human, human which put him leagues ahead of those others.

His reactions were a beat too slow to be genuine, always calculated, always considered, but she had assumed he had developmental delays due to institutionalization at a young age and was compensating for those. Combined with his high IQ and blunted affect there was a possible autism spectrum diagnosis in there somewhere that she hadn’t ever attempted to bring up but he was eccentric, not dangerous. 

When they first met, as he transitioned into his psychiatry practice, she watched him mirror her own style and mannerisms. She’d never met the surgeon he’d modeled himself on, but she would have bet on her own life that he was – he had been – out there. 

But Hannibal’s mask started to slip as his obsession with Will Graham grew and it wasn’t that he had developmental disabilities but that he was trying to conceal his utterly inappropriate desires. Now she could see through the veil. He was stripped naked and underneath his person suit was something frightening. Something dangerous.

“You are not safe here,” Hannibal said apparently unaffected by the gun aimed at his chest. “Those who remain will not hesitate to hurt you, should they find you alone.”

Bedelia’s arms were getting tired so she lowered the gun, keeping her finger alongside the trigger as she had been taught, barrel pointed at the floor. She said, “Why come here? There must be others you wish to save.”

“No,” he said. “Not presently.” 

“Why me?” she asked. Hannibal stopped to turn that over, like he’d never considered his own motives. For someone who instructed others on mindful thinking, Hannibal could be intensely clueless.

“Because you are clever, and pleasing to the eye. Because, in the end, you were smart enough to be afraid of me, but still challenge me. Because you are mercenary enough to take the offer I am going to put to you.” He moved closer, within arm’s reach. “You will be loved and respected, I will be feared and respected. Give me the gun.”

He took it from her shaking hands with his own steady, dry ones. Bedelia collapsed back against her bed. Hannibal unloaded the gun and put it in one pocket, the bullets in the other. The gun ruined the line of his pants, Bedelia thought, a little hysterically.

“Very Machiavellian. Do you plan to rule, Hannibal?”

“Yes,” he said. “Now, please, I will help you pack.”

It wasn’t until he was escorting her out the front door that Bedelia realised exactly how much he wasn’t joking. There were three trucks, armoured with cattle catchers, barbed wire, broken glass, and carrying several armed men waiting for them. They were rough-looking but clean and uninjured. They looked like the sort of men who had been equipped to handle this sort of thing – the end of the world. Not quite ready enough to hoard canned food in their basement, but enough skills to survive. Bedelia guessed one or two might be low-ranking military, police, or similar.

Whoever the men were, they loaded up her belongings without comment or complaint even though many of them – Hannibal’s selections – were designer gowns and wine as much as they were towels and medicine. When they looked at her, if they looked at her at all, it was at her knees. They were afraid, but not of her. They were afraid of looking at her the wrong way where Hannibal could see.

Hannibal opened the passenger door for her, helped her in, and got behind the wheel of the central truck. “I am sorry you have to give up your home like this, I know most people are very attached to their things.” he said, as though he hadn’t left behind his own beautiful home. “But I think you will appreciate where we are going.”

She waited for him to explain where that was, but he just smiled his strange, small smile and put the truck in gear. They drove in silence through the devastation of Baltimore. Hannibal’s defensive driving around smashed cars, toppled lamp-posts and post boxes, and corpses, was surprisingly good considering the speed they were driving at.

Bedelia kept her eyes open, despite the wine making her head spin. People came out of the wreckage, holding homemade weapons, looking to see who had gasoline. She heard the occasional gunshot echoing out from one of the other trucks, and flinched each time. Hannibal didn’t even blink.

Even once they were out of the city, several hours into their journey, they were still under attack. Nothing too coordinated and most people gave up when they were shot at. They also passed a small squad of armed men who stopped to watch the trucks but didn’t make any attempt to detain them.

“Doomsday preppers,” Hannibal said calmly once they were past. “They will do well, I think. Horrible people, but for now they will survive. To the south of us is a cult – I am unsure if they will strike out or if they will commit mass suicide; it’s too soon to tell – there are bikers of some sort to the east, and raiders all along the roads. Little kingdoms emerging from the wreckage. In these strange days, without law, man may declare himself master of anything he can subdue.” 

He glanced at her and Bedelia’s skin crawled. “Is that what you want from me?” she asked. Her voice didn’t shake. “Are you going to force me, Hannibal?”

His expression of offended dignity was reassuring. He looked like a cat whose tail had been pulled. “I will pretend you did not just insult me,” Hannibal said stiffly.

They turned a corner and suddenly, around the trees and mountains, Bedelia could see an honest to god castle rising up on the horizon.

“The orphanage was in a castle,” Hannibal said, which explained rather a lot of things, if Bedelia was honest. “Perfectly impregnable. Of course, castles are hard to come by in the North Americas but I recalled touring an excellent vineyard at this one. When it became apparent I wasn’t going to succumb to the disease I set out immediately to stake my claim, as they say. It is built to medieval specifications but was only completed in 2007 so it is extremely strong. There are fortifications, arable land, and those already occupying it were easy enough to subdue.”

“Little kingdoms,” Bedelia said faintly. 

It would have been nice if the bodies hanging from the battlements were a surprise, but alas, they were not. Equally unsurprising was their welcoming committee. Soldiers waiting at the gates for Hannibal. People desperate for someone to tell them what to do, for answers. Willing to kill for him, and willing to die for him. He wouldn’t say it, but eventually someone would, and he would graciously accept, as though it was their idea: King Hannibal. Jesus Christ.

He was showing her to her chambers, each room more lavishly painted in reds and golds than the one before. Disapproving saints stared down at her and the people moving about the castle parted like water around them.

“You said I would be loved and respected,” she said. “As what, exactly?”

“As my partner, so to speak. Your word will be second to mine, people may bring disputes to you and know you will judge fairly, you will know and understand those you command. It is a professional partnership I am offering, not a sexual one.” 

Bedelia wondered how few generations there were between Hannibal and actual aristocracy. She doubted it was more than two. “I see. I suppose I am as good a choice as any. What will you be doing?”

Hannibal opened a final door and gestured her inside. “Creating a new world from the smouldering ashes of the old one.”

Bedelia looked around the apartment that was something between salvation and a prison. Medieval-style bed, an ornate table, a small sitting area. Hannibal’s men at arms deposited her belongings in a corner and disappeared again. She was too tired to take it in. Already the alcohol was starting to wear off and she was simply exhausted. There was nothing invigorating about fearing for your life, and the constant anxiety had left her drained.

There was a beautiful meal laid out for them. Hannibal held her chair for her. “You’ll get bored,” she said at last, sitting and letting him drape the napkin over her lap. “It’s not within you to be content and if you are the authority, with whom will you struggle?”

Hannibal shrugged in a fatalistic, distinctly French sort of way and served her. “These are early days Doctor Du Maurier. We will burn that bridge when we come to it, I suppose.”

He took his own seat. “Please,” he said. “You must be hungry and tired. We can talk it over after we have dined and you have had the opportunity to rest.”

Bedelia glanced back at the heavy wooden door. On the other side were armed men, a wasteland, suicide or brutal death. On this side Hannibal who was waiting for her decision. His eyes were a flat black in the candlelight and his dark suit and red shirt made him blend into the shadows, and the pattern on the wall.

“They fear you,” she said. Spearing a cut of finely sliced meat with her fork, Bedelia hesitated. She could see it now, the madness under his skin – carefully cultivated, carefully contained – but she couldn’t see its form. She knew that by the time it was clear to her, it would be too late. She had to make up her mind now and live with it. 

“I know,” Hannibal said, watching her intently. 

The human instinct for self-preservation was one of the strongest drives in the world, she knew that. It didn’t make her decision any easier. “Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal no dissensions arose either among his men or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune,” Bedelia quoted. “This arose from his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers.”

His teeth looked very sharp in the strange light. “Exactly,” he said.

However Persephone got to Hades’ realm, eventually it was forbidden among humans to speak her name. Dread queen of the underworld. Of course, when in Rome...She stifled a smile. When in Rome with Hannibal ad Portas? Bedelia ate the food Hannibal had prepared for her, and sealed their bargain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone wants to know about the beautiful Castello di Amorosa I barely bother to describe, [please feast your eyes here.](http://www.castellodiamorosa.com/Tour-the-Castle) There will be more about the castle in later chapters because hot damn, it's pretty.


	3. Love/Belonging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margot Verger finds hope at the end of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTENTION FOR TRIGGER WARNINGS: The tags for this fic have changed because of the Vergers. That means rape, references to rape and incest, pedophilia mentions and basically Mason Verger is the scum of the earth. Also gore. Like, kind of comedy gore, but gore.

**_Love/Belonging: Friendship, family, sexual intimacy_ **

**_Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance among their social groups, regardless if these groups are large or small. Humans need to love and be loved – both sexually and non-sexually – by others._ **

They’re taken by bandits. Or whatever people who snatch people off the roads are called. It was stupid to travel with a group, Margot knew that from the start. She hadn’t said anything because she didn’t want to be alone with Mason. She wishes he’d died in the plague. She wishes he’d died at birth. She wishes she had the courage to hurt him.

If anyone has any illusions about what’s to come, they’re shattered pretty quickly, along with one poor idiot’s kneecap. They’re taken to a dingy little compound and stuck in a shack with no light and two big cages. The men are beaten, the women are raped – a few of the men, too. Margot has had worse done to her and much younger too, she doesn’t cry. It’s supposed to cow everyone into silence. Not her brother. He is silent because he is enjoying the show.

She tears a strip of fabric from the hem of her shirt and uses it to wipe between her legs when they are done with her. Mason watches. Margot thinks of flies settling over his eyes.

They’re held captive for four days before the sound of sporadic gunfire wakes Margot up. Or maybe it’s the high wailing of injured men. She doesn’t cling to the other women, isn’t a part of their huddle into the corner of their cage. She sits at the periphery because it doesn’t matter who wins. They’re still in a cage.

Eventually the gunfire comes to an end. The shouting dies down and then the door to their prison is opened and a handful of newcomers step inside. Apparently they’re about to change hands. Margot doesn’t let her hopes raise up until she sees who has come to save them.

Their leader is a tall woman, not big, but muscular and she has a bloodied machete strapped to her belt and a rifle on her back. She has freckles across her whole face, black on brown, and her head is shaved. “Tell Hannibal we’ll have incoming,” she says to one of the men. “And someone check inside the fuse box. They’ll keep the keys there.”

The woman steps back so the keys can be brought through. “My name’s Judy. We’re not going to hurt you,” she says. “We come from Amorosa and we don’t keep slaves.” She waits for her cohorts to let out the male prisoners and sends her fellows away. So it’s just her and the prisoners.

Margot is dirty and wearing nothing but rags and a black eye. But she gets up first and goes to the cage door that is now open. She extends her hand to Judy. “Margot,” she says. Judy’s hand is callused, warm, and a little damp. She holds Margot’s hand for longer than she needs to before letting go and clearing her throat, uncomfortable. Margot wants…

Margot isn’t a hundred percent sure what she wants, but she knows she’d like to stick with Judy – the woman who understands that even fellow prisoners might not be safe.

They emerge into the sun, covering their eyes against the sudden brightness. Their former captors are on their knees with their hands behind their heads. This new group is a mix of men and women, all armed to the teeth. 

Judy isn’t the leader. Margot spots their leader immediately. That sort of assured self-confidence that powerful men have radiates off him. He is used to getting what he wants and what he wants right now seems to be a little order, if you please. Former captors in one group. Male prisoners in another, female in the third. Dead bodies stripped, beheaded, and tossed aside. She sees a couple of people loading the heads into the back of one of their vehicles and swallows down bile. At least she’s away from Mason for a little bit longer.

The man holsters his gun. It’s not a smooth motion, he’s not used to carrying. There are knives strapped across his chest though and they appear well cared for. He looks over the assembled prisoners with a dispassionate eye. Knives beckons with two fingers and a second man walks reluctantly over. 

He’s got a shotgun slung over one shoulder and he looks so young. He was probably peaches and cream before the end of the world, Margot figures. Now he’s the off-white of milk, tired and worn. His blue eyes are wide and somewhere between frightened and crazed, although he takes in the scene perfectly calmly.

“Bring the prisoners back with us, let them have a place,” Shotgun says. 

“And the others?” asks Knives.

Shotgun meets Knives’ eyes. “Slavers,” he says, voice steady. “I don’t give a fuck. Do what you want. Kill them, hang them from the battlements, put them in a rocket and fly them to the moon…”

“Will,” says Knives, mercilessly kind.

Will grins at Knives with the sort of euphoric mania that comes from no longer caring. “Eat them, don’t eat them,” Will says. “It’s the end of the world, Hannibal, you’re hardly the biggest monster out there now.” He seems to shake, or to resettle himself, like a bird ruffling its feathers. “We have a lot of mouths to feed,” he says, shame and anger bringing colour to his pale face.

Margot watches him struggle between practicality and morality. She can see why Hannibal likes him, there’s something good in him.

“I will do as you ask,” Hannibal says, testing that goodness.

Will’s hands clench into fists and then relax. “Bring them,” he says, low and rough. “Don’t keep them, please, just…kill them, get what you can, and be done with it.” Hannibal draws in a breath but Will puts a hand on his chest, stopping his speech. “If you keep them, they’re livestock, and their frightened faces, and cries and pleading will turn everyone against you. Ask Bedelia, I’m right. You can cure the meat, don’t be a snob.”

Will clearly expects Hannibal to get angry but he’s reading it all wrong. Margot knows what an oncoming storm looks like, and Hannibal’s not it. “I will make you brandied Chateaubriand with fresh peppercorn the first night then,” Hannibal says. “I think you will like it. It’s not as,” he flicks his fingers dismissively, “complicated as some of my other dishes.”

Will’s smile skews slightly. “Do as you please,” he says, and walks away. As well as the cars, this group has a handful of horses and he goes to pet their noses and talk to the animals.

Judy keeps her eyes on Hannibal. Margot keeps her eyes on Judy. “Please don’t leave me alone,” she wants to say, but doesn’t, because begging never gets anyone anywhere.

They’re loaded up into the flatbeds of the trucks, perched on the roof, a few in the odd vacant seat. Her captors are bound by hand and the rope tied to the saddles of the horses; they have to move fast or be dragged. Judy sits on a piebald mare, western-style, and digs a pair of sunglasses out of her tac vest. She rides with lazy ease and is soon lost in the shuffle.

Margot feels like all hope just vanished with her. It’s stupid, but that woman is the first person she’s seen so far who doesn’t make her want to put a gun in her mouth. She looks at Judy and sees survival that isn’t just survival. There might be more. Margot could be more.

Mason sits next to her in a flatbed and pinches one of her nipples so hard she wants to scream. She keeps it in. There is hope, now.

The castle – the _castle_ for crissakes – is beautiful. They’re given water to wash in, clean clothes, and told they are free to leave at any time. Margot ducks away from her brother and goes exploring. There are children about, but there are enough adults around that she is sure he won’t do anything. Yet.

Margot wanders the hallways, stretching her legs. Hannibal’s little kingdom is extremely well-run. Everyone seems to be busy, working on the vegetables growing, preparing food in the kitchens, patrolling the actual battlements. There is a man who shouts like he used to be a drill sergeant teaching knife strikes to a small group.

She finds dining halls converted to textile storage and repair, an armoury, a library, and a huge store of wine. There’s a room that looks like a throne room, but is set up more like a meeting house. There are shared living spaces, some private ones, a few tents erected outside, and even a hammock strung up between two pillars. They are allowed to settle how they please, it seems.

Then she finds Judy, strolling through the corridors. She isn’t visibly armed beyond a knife at her hip, and Margot approaches timidly, hoping her face isn’t as red as she thinks it might be. “Hey,” Margot says.

“Margot,” Judy says and smiles. Her eyes crinkle up so much they almost disappear and she’s missing her left incisor. There are stars tattooed behind her ear. Margot wonders what she was like Before and decides it doesn’t matter.

“I, uh,” Margot says. “I was wondering if I could walk with you a bit.”

Judy shrugs. “Sure,” she says. “I got some nasty work needs doing if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”

They go outside, through the courtyard and head towards one of the outbuildings. It stinks like an abattoir. Margot has a strong stomach. She nods when Judy gives her a questioning look, and they go inside. The heads that were taken from Margot’s captors are piled up haphazardly along with some broken Ikea lamps. 

“This place was built by some guy,” Judy says, not especially helpfully. “It’s not really old. I mean, it has a dungeon, but that was just for tourists.”

“There’s a dungeon?” Margot says. 

Judy finds a couple of dodgy looking stools and pulls them out. “Yeah. Got an iron maiden and everything. Don’t go down there. For real – stay out. Anyway, there’s no wall spikes, right? So it’s not so easy to display the heads of your enemies. I’m rigging up these busted-ass lamps to the parapets. Not quite the same, but you’ll be able to see the heads from the road, and that’s really the point.” 

Margot picks up one of the lamps and starts unscrewing the shade and smashed lightbulb. Judy picks up one of the heads and examines it. 

“Fucking Hannibal,” Judy mutters.

“He saved me,” Margot says loyally.

Judy gives her a long, serious look. “He’ll keep us safe as long as it suits his purpose and not a second longer. Rumor says he was the Chesapeake Ripper, you know? Took most people a while to get used to all the death and murder, eating people ‘cause there’s nothing left to raid from the shops. Not him. He’s down in the kitchens teaching us all proper fucking cuisine.”

Margot is still comforted. She’s spent all her life with monsters. This one doesn’t want to hurt her, and that puts him a head and shoulders above the rest. “How about you?” she says instead.

“How about me what?” Judy asks, and when the lamp is stripped down to the stand, she jams the head onto it. It wobbles alarmingly. Blood drips onto the floor and Margot has to catch the whole stupid mess of it when it topples over. “I’m not so sure this will work,” Judy admits.

It’s suddenly funny. Standing there, surrounded by the severed heads of her enemies and fucking Ikea lamps, it’s surreal, and Margot has to lay the lamp down when she starts to laugh. After a second Judy joins in.

“Oh fuck,” Margot says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s a headlight.” She feels as though she hasn’t laughed for a hundred years.

Judy clutches her stomach. “Oh, don’t, I’ll pee my pants,” she says. “Headlights, Jesus on a bicycle, Margot.”

Margot leans in and kisses Judy on the cheek. Judy doesn’t push her away, or panic, or hit her. She sees Margot, and her shaky hands, and her frightened face, and her mouth crumples a little sadly. “You running from something,” Judy says like it should be a question, but isn’t.

Margot stares down at the headlamp. “Can’t go fast enough,” she agrees. “But it’s not that. Mostly I like your freckles.”

Judy laughs again. It’s loud, and weird, and her whole body rocks with it. Margot wants to bottle it up so she can hear it whenever she wants. “Talk to Bedelia,” Judy says. “She’s the one looks like the ice queen. If you can’t tell me, I mean. Whatever followed you from before, doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it now. I worked in an office, you know? Part of the Scadians before all this, used to do reinactment fighting most weekends. Now I’m teaching people how to use pole arms and swords for real. Now I’m part of the tactical training group. No one’s calling me sweetheart or darling, or telling me to fetch coffee, or wondering if I got my job on my back. I got more in me than that, as it turns out.”

Margot feels something inside her unclench. There’s the voice in her head that sounds an awful lot like Mason telling here that there’s nothing inside. That she’s a useless cunt. But there isn’t any law for him to pay off, this time. There’s no jail, no judge, no money. Margot picks up another head and shoves it onto another lampstand so hard she feels it hit the top of the skull. It falls over when she lets go. She watches the dead face of the man who’d raped her (one of the men) smash into the stone flags underfoot. Just a little violence. Just a small revenge.

“We’ll sand-bag ‘em in place later, or tie them to something,” Margot says. “Toss me another.”

Judy shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “Headlamps indeed,” she says, leans over and kisses Margot’s cheek. “You’ve got something more in you,” Judy says. “You’ll find it.”


	4. Love/Belonging - Override

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will finds out first hand how deficiencies of love and belonging can override and take precedence over safety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and clinical depression in the absence of this love or belonging element. This need for belonging may overcome the physiological and security needs.

Will felt ridiculous, feverish with humiliation. The logs were piled high in the hearth, and Will was sweating, the flimsy linen draped artfully around his hips already translucent and clinging. The firelight flickered across the red and gold on the walls, throwing shadows into the dark corners of the room.

His wrists were bound with coarse rope, pinpricks of blood beading out of tiny cuts in his chafed skin. He couldn’t see the knot properly with his arms stretched up over his head, but the one at the other end of the rope, securing him to the bedpost, was an icicle hitch. He could hang his entire body weight from it and it wouldn’t budge. Will shifted his weight from foot to foot, unable to keep still. Already his hands were getting pins and needles and they were creeping up his arms. He suspected Hannibal would keep him there until taking his arms down would cause him significant discomfort.

He didn’t regret agreeing to Hannibal’s demands (demands politely disguised as requests), because that was far too small a regret. There wasn’t an emotion big enough to encompass how many things he wished he could change. It wasn’t the first time he had been at Hannibal’s mercy. It was just the first time they were openly admitting it and Hannibal was free to do almost anything he wanted.

And apparently he wanted to tie Will to the bed and…paint him? Draw him? He had art supplies at any rate, and a tray covered with a cloth that was making Will nervous.

“In my younger days, I was greatly praised for my technical skills in drawing,” Hannibal said, laying out sketchbook, pencils, scalpel. “I have an eidetic memory and a good hand so it is nothing to recreate an image, or to transcribe one to the page. But to create real art you need more than precision. You need passion, which mostly I lack.” 

Instruments aligned just so, Hannibal moved closer to Will and Will tugged helplessly at the ropes. It was instinct to try and escape, and his whole body cringed away as Hannibal brushed a curl of hair back from Will’s forehead. 

“Sorry,” he panted, “I don’t…” He couldn’t meet Hannibal’s eyes any more than he could stop the shakes wracking his body.

Hannibal made a pleased sound, low and smug. “I never possessed the ability to create true art with pencil and paper, only in flesh. I should like to see if I can translate my passion for one form into another media.” 

Will looked up to see Hannibal uncover the tray on the table. He couldn’t help the small, frightened noise that escaped him when he saw not paint, or charcoal, or even more rope, but several slim metal bars. Long like knitting needles and sharp at the end.

Gently, Hannibal touched his fingertips to the hinge of Will’s jaw. “Normally I would hesitate to gag you, but I don’t want you to crack a tooth.” 

Stubbornly, Will shook his head, turning his face away. He wanted to tell Hannibal that this had never been part of their agreement, but he was afraid to open his mouth. From the corner of his eye he could see Hannibal’s expression – he wasn’t annoyed by Will’s resistance, if anything he was enjoying it. Will reminded himself that Hannibal’s idea of a good time was torturing people and pulling the organs out of his victims while they were still alive. The more pain Will felt, the more coerced he was, the more he struggled, the more Hannibal liked it.

Will closed his eyes and opened his mouth. He suspected that part of the reason Hannibal was so fixated on him had to do less with his empathy and more with the fact that – even _with_ his disorder – he wouldn’t give in. So he gave in, just to deny Hannibal the satisfaction of making him submit.

The thick wedge of fabric Hannibal pressed between his teeth was uncomfortable but no matter how hard he bit down, it kept his teeth apart. “I’ll remove it as soon as I can,” Hannibal promised. He didn’t sound the least bit frustrated by Will’s attempts to deny him his little pleasures. Will didn’t like what that implied. “One last thing and then we can begin.”

Will’s eyes stung and he wasn’t sure if he was just sweating or if he was crying. He couldn’t feel his hands anymore, they were totally numb, but the pins and needles had spread to his elbows. There was a slow intake of breath and Will knew Hannibal could smell his fear, like an animal. 

His hands were warm on Will’s body as he lined up the first needle, sharp against Will’s skin. The first skewer. “I am going to draw you as Saint Sebastian,” Hannibal said. “Try not to struggle too much, I am a surgeon after all, I know what I’m doing.”

Will told himself he wouldn’t scream.

The first needle went into the soft, sensitive skin of his tricep; through flesh and fat and came out the other side. He didn’t scream, but the low bestial groan and the tears that poured out of him like water weren’t much better.

The second and third Hannibal pushed into his side.

The fourth into his thigh.

The fifth Hannibal held for a moment, considering. Then he fit his hand under Will’s jaw and forced his head back, exposing his throat. His thumb traced over the panicked flutter of his pulse, over veins and tendons, his Adam’s apple, his lymph nodes. “Will,” he said, softly into the thin skin of his temple, lips pressed against the veins there so he could taste Will’s fear. “Hold very still.”

The fifth needle went through Will’s throat, careful, clean. It came out the other side without hitting any vital systems.

Hannibal pulled the gag out of Will’s mouth, pressing a kiss to one side before licking at the spit that had leaked past the fabric. “There,” he said. He sounded less calm than he had before, a little control slipping. He was enjoying this more than he had anticipated, in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

“Take them out,” Will begged. He hung from the ropes, agonized. “Oh, God, please take them out.” Every twitch of his body made the bars shift inside him. They hung heavily from his wounds but so much of him was numb. He couldn’t feel the one in his arm at all. Deep wounds, he remembered, no nerve endings on the inside.

It seemed oddly apropos for Hannibal. Deep wounds that you couldn’t even feel until it was too late and you were bleeding out.

Hannibal hushed him absently, washing his hands carefully before settling down at the table. “Focus on me,” he said. “If the pain is too much, use your gift to see yourself as I see you.”

Will stared unseeing at the ceiling. He wondered if he would go into shock, but there was no blood coming from his wounds. It was possible he was still crying, but he didn’t think so. Endorphins were flooding his system, enabling him to get his feet under him again. He leaned against the bedpost and heard a hiss of breath from Hannibal.

They made eye contact and Will fell into Hannibal’s mind.

_I take care that I don’t damage him. He suffers so prettily but no matter how much I chip away at him, there is always something more underneath. I don’t understand it. I want to, but this anticipation, this unsatisfied curiosity is what draws me to him._

_His weight rests mostly on his bound wrists, shaking legs and the wooden post propping him up. His skin glows gold, the firelight reflecting off sweat. He is pierced by my hand, I have penetrated him, wounded him. I am not the first to break him open like this but I will be the last. It is such basic psychology, but all the more powerful for its simplicity._

_I know my saints, the lines of Sebastian, his beauty. But nothing quite like this. It is more perfect than I imagined. I will remember this moment for the rest of my life. This is the ecstasy of creation in a way I have never felt before. It is not my design. I didn’t see this coming. This is hunger, this is being filled, this is desire and satiation, it feels a little bit like love. It is probably the closest I will ever get and it is enough._

Hannibal looked away first.

He began sketching and Will, who couldn’t remember drawing anything other than clocks in his adult life, could see it was a precise rendering. Will let his head rest against the bedpost, still half-caught in Hannibal’s mind. The consumed and consuming. They would be the death of each other, he was sure of it. 

He recalled a woman he had known in Louisiana – a teenager, really, but she had seemed so much older than he, at ten, did – always smudges of chalk on her hands the way that oil stuck to his. She had a missing front tooth, an easy drawl, and liked to draw him. “Chile you just let it move through you. You ain’t the maker, you the vessel.” He remembered that he always looked haunted in her pictures. White chalk on black paper.

“Loosen your grip,” he croaked. He was thirsty. “Relax your arm. You’ll remember the details, so draw it how you feel it, not how you see it.”

Hannibal hesitated, then Will could hear him turning the page of his sketch book. “Don’t talk,” Hannibal muttered. “You’ll injure your throat.” Another hesitation and then there was nothing but the crackle of the fire, Will’s hitched, pained breathing, and the soft scratching of Hannibal’s pencil on paper.

Will had no idea how long Hannibal kept him there. The needles ached and burned every time he took a breath but the endorphins dulled it, turned it into something strange. He felt lifted out of his body, elevated.

It wasn’t until Hannibal closed the sketchbook that he noticed he was half-hard. Will didn’t bother trying to hide it but he let his head roll on his neck so he could watch Hannibal clean his hands again. “Is it good?” he asked. It sounded a lot more like, “Am I good?”

Hannibal knelt on the floor in front of him, shoulder nudging the spike in his thigh. He stripped the cloth from Will’s hips and let it fall to the side. He looked up at Will like a penitent before a saint and Will wished he could touch Hannibal’s hair.

“Yes,” Will said, and Hannibal took Will’s cock into his mouth.

It wasn’t the best blow-job Will had ever received, but Hannibal – mostly holding him up, at this point – moaned around his cock like he was dying and what he lacked in experience he made up for with enthusiasm.

Will was aching, shuddering, caught between agony and ecstasy. Hannibal pulled away and stood up, one arm around Will’s waist, holding almost all his weight now.

“Oh,” Will said, all of Hannibal’s intentions clear to him. “Oh, no, please don’t. I can’t.”

Hannibal pulled the needle out of his neck, out of his thigh and his side and his arm. Will bit him, hard, on the shoulder, muffling his cries that way. Hannibal swore beautifully in French and tugged on the release line for the icicle hitch.

He half-shoved half-tossed Will back onto the bed, the open wounds bleeding now, not heavily, smearing red all over the white sheets. His arms felt like they were on fire as the blood rushed back into them and he dug his heels into the bed, arching up in pain and then collapsed when it made all the places he had been impaled burn white hot.

Hannibal crawled up after him, bending down to take Will back into his mouth again. He was still dressed, still had his shoes on. Now Will could drag his arms down, tangle numb fingers into Hannibal’s hair and pull. He expected Hannibal to slap his hands away, but Hannibal let Will pull and shove, drag him down the length of his cock until Will could feel it hit the back of his throat.

“Fuck, god-damn-it, Hannibal,” Will said. He couldn’t move his right leg or arm without pain lancing through him – bastard handicapped his dominant side, he’d be reliant on help for days – but he was still able to force Hannibal’s head up and down, fucking his mouth. Will didn’t think he could lift his own head, not with a puncture wound in his neck, but he managed it for a second and saw Hannibal ripping open his trousers, shoving a hand inside, jerking himself roughly.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Will said, gasping for breath. “I see you now, and I’m not afraid.” He came, feeling Hannibal choke on his cock.

Will lay still, floating now, hazy with pain, endorphins, adrenaline and god knew what else. Hannibal pressed his face to the wound in Will’s thigh, licking at the blood seeping out and down his skin, and brought himself off.

He sat up, untangling Will’s fingers from his hair, undoing the ropes around his wrists. Neither of them spoke as Hannibal cleaned himself up, and then bathed and bandaged Will carefully, massaging his arms so they cramped less. He brought them both water and blew out the candles around the room before lying down next to Will, curled on his side, watching Will’s profile.

It was simple enough to slip into Hannibal’s thoughts. Later it would become difficult again, but together in the dark it was simple. Hannibal’s silence was filled with uneasiness. It had been a long time since someone had unsettled him as Will could. His footing was unsure, his desires confused.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Will said, and let exhaustion drag him down into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> St Sebastian is probably the pin up boy of saints. Originally paintings of him were scandalous because a lot of the young ladies were interesting in eating of that body if you know what I mean and I think you do (this is not a cannibalism joke for once. It’s a penis joke. Now it’s a joke I’ve killed…). Later on he was painted and drawn and sculpted in a way that made people look askance and wonder why all these dudes were painting this very pretty dude all *impaled* and with a beatific look on his face, and with that hot bod…it's very evocative of Ganymede, and basically St. Sebastian is the gay pin up of saints and you should check out the art that has been done of him.


	5. Esteem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When everything else is crumbling, Abigail is still standing.

**_Esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others_ **

**_All humans have a need to feel respected; this includes the need to have self-esteem and self-respect. Esteem presents the typical human desire to be accepted and valued by others. The "lower" version of esteem is the need for respect from others. This may include a need for status, recognition, fame, prestige, and attention. The "higher" version manifests itself as the need for self-respect. For example, the person may have a need for strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence, and freedom. Deprivation of these needs may lead to an inferiority complex, weakness, and helplessness._ **

 

People who are infected display flu-like symptoms one week after being exposed. They're contagious the entire time. After that, they have maybe another week to live, at most. The disease attacks the brain and damages almost all the systems. The infected believe they are starving to death and are only sated by the consumption of raw red meats - beef, pork, venison... cats, dogs, horses...people. Alive or dead, it doesn't matter. The disease can't travel between species, but there are reports of people being attacked by the infected and contracting the disease themselves.

The disease eats away at long-term memory. It causes aggression. It destroys pain receptors. By the time the disease destroys the autonomic nervous system and causes massive organ failure, the infected bears little resemblance to the person they were before. 

It takes about three seconds for the media to call it the Z-virus. The infected, very briefly, are like the zombies from some god-awful horror story. Then their brain stops telling their hearts to beat, and their lungs to expand and contract, and they die.

Most of them, not all of them.

Hannibal tracks the news reports and the CDC statistics with an increasingly grim expression. The Z-virus spreads from Asia to Europe. It's only a matter of time before it hits North America, South America. Africa. Everywhere.

"What are our chances?" Abigail asks. 

He doesn't make her stay away from the windows, underground, hidden anymore. She sits on the kitchen counter, heels swinging. Hannibal is so distracted he doesn't even frown at her.

Abigail has tried to calculate the odds of her own survival. She survived her father's madness, Will Graham's madness, Hannibal's whim, and now she's up against the disease that is killing most of humanity.

"There's a thirty percent chance we will live," Hannibal says. "A ten percent chance we will be infected but not die." She can see him thinking, the animal cunning that has helped him survive for as long as he has. Now he's the wolf at the bottom of a pit, not sure if it can make the jump back out again. There's no way to fight this. There's no one he can kill, no one he can manipulate to save himself this time.

"I guess you don't need to worry about the FBI," she says later, as they sit together in front of the fire, drinking wine.

Hannibal stares into the flames. "I suppose not," he says. "I should send Jack Crawford a letter. It seems like the least I can do, after all these years."

If he's afraid of dying, he doesn't show it. 

Abigail figures at this point there's nothing to be gained from fear. They will live, or they will not. She says as much and Hannibal's mouth quirks up in a little smile. "It's freeing, isn't it," he says. "When you let go." He takes her hand and she's a little ashamed of how much better she feels. 

When the Z-virus comes to Baltimore, Hannibal infects them both. No sense in waiting around, he says.

For a week there is nothing. Then Abigail gets a headache, and her temperature goes up two degrees. She takes an asprin, soaks in the bathtub for a bit, and goes to bed early. In the morning she is fine.

It's funny, she thinks, all the ways she should have died. Maybe not funny, haha, but funny in the same vein as Hannibal's sense of humour. A little grotesque, a lot morbid, heavy on the dramatic irony, sometimes really cheesy.

Hannibal gets sick. He runs a temperature of a hundred and five, he won't eat. She finds him wandering the house at night, delirious. Abigail thinks about Will Graham and wonders how much satisfaction he'd get from seeing Hannibal like this. She doesn't feel satisfaction, she feels a little bit terrified.

He stares at her with glassy eyes and calls her Mischa. The smile he gives her is frightening in its warmth and sincerity. He asks her when she got so big.

Abigail has a collection of guns now. She takes a pistol and leads Hannibal back to bed. He dozes fitfully while she keeps watch. If he dies, she'll bury him in his back yard. If he doesn't die, but doesn't get better she'll put a bullet in his head and then she'll bury him.

Hannibal might be a monster, but she won't leave him to a fate worse than death.

She falls asleep some time in the early hours of the morning, exhausted. 

When she wakes up, Hannibal isn't in the bed. She finds Hannibal in the basement. He's lying on the floor, packages of raw meat open around him and blood on his hands and face. 

Abigail creeps up behind him, wary of getting within reach, and kicks him in the leg, gun steady. "Are you dead?" she asks.

Whatever devil's luck he has that has kept him alive for so many years doesn't fail him this time. 

"Did you just kick me?" Hannibal asks. He rolls onto his back with a groan.

"It's what they teach you in first aid if you're a girl. In case the person is faking it." Abigail puts the back of her hand to his forehead. His fever is broken. "I guess you'll live," she says. 

Hannibal sits up wincing, waving away her help. "Why am I in the basement?" he says, irritated, then notices the state of his hands.

"How's your appetite?" she asks, still wary.

"It would be disingenuous to say I have no desire for human flesh. Suffice it to say that I would prefer a cup of camomile tea right now. Toast and honey later." Hannibal staggers to his feet and Abigail puts her gun away. He presses a hand to his stomach unhappily. "It's possible I might be sick," he says. 

Hannibal desperately needs a shower and a change of clothing. His hair is sweat-lank and he is ripe with fever sweat. Abigail pulls him into a hug anyway. He tolerates it, indulgent, before he abruptly pushes her away and doubles over, vomiting up blood and raw chunks of meat. 

She thinks that it probably serves him right, in the cosmic scheme of things.

During the next few days, while he recovers from the fever, she goes out for supplies. 

Martial law comes into effect. It makes what she has to do a lot easier. She comes back to the house with a truck. Hannibal doesn't ask about the bloodstain on the passenger seat. She doesn't offer any explanation. Likewise, she doesn't ask about where he got the mountain of canned goods and a black eye.

They're both of them pretty handy people. They take apart the Bentley to make a cattle-catcher for the front of the truck, and reinforce the undercarriage.

"What is it that you see in me?" she asks. "The thing in me that keeps on living no matter what?"

"I see a great many things in you, Abigail. But the improbability of your existence charms me, yes." He turns to smile at her, reassuring, and fires up the electric drill. "Not everyone has the fortitude to endure."

They take the Castello di Amorosa by force and set up there. Before everything went to hell in a handbasket, she saw what Hannibal was, just little glimpses, but she'd seen. He's a predator, every inch of him, and Abigail has felt like prey for so long that it takes a while to realize she's not scared of him anymore. Right now she is useful to him. She's a better shot than he is. She has more wilderness survival skills. She is more or less sane. It's startling to realize that he is counting on her as backup. He takes point, she takes his six. 

Practical Abigail. Ruthless Abigail. There is a little more respect in Hannibal's expression these days. She stands a little taller.

They defend their new home with ferocity and they don't waste any part of the dead because in this new world all resources are precious. Abigail helps Hannibal prepare the bodies and he teaches her how to cook. 

Abigail takes a little pleasure in painting "Don't Cannibals/Open Inside," on the heavy wooden doors that bar the way into the castle. Hannibal looks at her askance but she just smiles at him. 

When people ask for refuge, they let them in. Neither one of them are very good judges of character so they keep the rules simple: everyone helps as much as they are able, no fighting, no stealing, follow rationing, no touching anyone else unless they consent to being touched. Stay out of the dungeon. Be polite. You can leave at any time if the arrangement no longer suits you.

One person breaks the rules. He and Hannibal go into the dungeon for a talk. Only Hannibal comes back out.

Abigail knows it's selfish how much she likes the new world but then, she's never met so many people like herself. She makes friends with other girls who clenched their teeth and did things they aren't proud of to keep living. They're all killers now. Hard-eyed survivors who follow Hannibal because they don't know what else to do.

Abigail cuts her hair short and ignores the pained look on Hannibal's face. She doesn't need to be ashamed of her scars. It's freeing.

She teaches newcomers to hunt. They go out in small groups into the surrounding countryside and come back with deer, squirrels, foxes. When a group of local militia - what's left of law enforcement - try to take the Castello by force, Abigail stalks the battlements with her rifle and picks them off one by one. 

Some of the people who come to them have heard of the castle with the cannibal king. Word travels surprisingly fast despite how quickly civilization is crumbling. Abigail finds out she has her own reputation - the girl who cannot die. For the first time she's part of the mythology as the hero, not the damsel, not the monster.

Hannibal manages to catch a couple of the infected and keeps them down in the dungeon of the castle. She doesn't ask. She doesn't want to know. It's not like he's trying to discover a cure. She doesn't ask when he takes non-infected people down there either. He doesn't prey on their own people, there are plenty of outsiders trying to hurt them, he has his pick.

The shirt she has on she took from a corpse. The gun she has on her hip she took from a corpse. The meal in her belly is human flesh. She doesn't begrudge Hannibal his pleasures. The bodies he leaves are still harvestable. 

It's Abigail who suggests he might need someone slightly less...terrifying to partner with. He's perfectly cordial to the other survivors but they're still scared of him. Bedelia Du Maurier is beautiful, and poised. She's got enough grit to stand up to him and he actually respects what she has to say. 

"You _cried_ ," Bedelia says, horrified, when he introduces them. "My God, I thought for sure you'd killed her." Then, "So the meal you brought me after. That wasn't-"

"Oh it was," Hannibal says. "But not her."

Abigail tries to picture Hannibal weeping for her loss and cannot. He cut off her ear and used it to frame Will Graham. From the news coverage, he managed to shove it down Will's throat. He's a curious beast, that's for sure. She leaves them to hammer out the details of their alliance and goes to talk training with Judy. The ammo won't last forever, they're going to need to figure out alternative weaponry and Judy has a stash of armour and swords. She knows where they can get more.

And then civilization collapses completely. No more dying. No more disease. There's nothing left of the old world. There's no going back.

Hannibal disappears and comes back with Will Graham in tow. From the battlements Abigail can see the look on Bedelia's face: a strange mixture of pity and relief. Everyone who lives in the Castello is there because they want to be. Hannibal went to get Bedelia, but if she really wanted to leave, he would let her. Abigail is certain Will Graham does not have that option. 

Bedelia carries a knife, a long beautiful thing that Hannibal had given her. A Kaiken, he had told her, owned by his aunt, passed down from the days of the samurai. Samurai women carried them for self-defence or ritual suicide. When Hannibal is looking in another direction, she gives it to Will.

Abigail sighs and goes down to intervene. She stays back until they're in Hannibal's room, out of the sight of prying eyes. Abigail raps on the door and lets herself in.

Will stares at her like she's a ghost. It honestly looks like Abigail's very existence might be the thing that breaks him. "You bastard," Will says, voice cracking. He's shaking so hard he has to sit down. "You let me think you'd killed her." 

Hannibal smiles at Will, at Abigail, so pleased with himself. "I wanted it to be a surprise," he says, ushering her forward like a gift.

Will reaches out to Abigail. She doesn't say anything but she takes Will's hand to reassure him that she is real. That all of it is real. He presses the back of his other hand to his mouth, eyes wide and wet. Hannibal hovers next to Will, not quite touching him, but standing way too close.

"Give him room, Hannibal," Abigail says. "Let him breathe."

Hannibal can afford to be magnanimous in victory; Will isn't going anywhere. He backs off to the other side of the room and starts mixing a hydrating solution of water, sugar, and salt.

Will clutches at her hand. "Are you safe?"

Abigail doesn't even know what to say to that. "Of course," she says. Maybe he's still crazy. "But I need you to give me that knife. The one you lifted off Bedelia." Abigail figures there's no point in losing the little bit of leverage Bedelia's given her, and no doubt Will won't want to get her into trouble either.

Will hands it to her, stricken. He glances between them, from her to Hannibal and back again. He's more lucid than she's ever seen before.

"Oh," Will says. "Abigail, what has he done to you?"

Abigail rolls her eyes and tucks the knife into her belt. "Kept me alive."

"All those things," Will says, but he seems to be talking mostly to himself. "All those terrible things, just to see what would happen." She has seen people realize they're dead men walking. It's the same look on Will's face. "And you'll feed me to him to keep this place running."

"I'm not going to hurt you, Will," Hannibal says as though Will is being ridiculous. He sits next to Will, their knees bumping together, and strokes Will's sweaty hair back from his face. "You need to rehydrate," he says.

Will is right. She likes him well enough, but he isn't the first person she's liked that she's sacrificed and he probably won't be the last. 

Abigail leaves him and Hannibal alone, shutting the door behind her. There are things to do. There is always something that needs to be done and she has a feeling Hannibal is going to be distracted for the foreseeable future. It's okay, she's got it covered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Abigail paints on the doors is taken from AMC's The Walking Dead. The original was supposed to read "Don't Open, Dead Inside" but the way it's done makes the eye see "Don't Dead Open Inside." I dunno that Abigail would watch AMC but why the hell not. She's stuck in Hannibal's place all that time, might as well stream some shit while he's out screwing with Will.


	6. Self-Actualization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal defends what is his.

**_Self-actualization: morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts_ **

**_A self-actualizer is a person who is living creatively and fully using his or her potentials. What a man can do, he must do. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. One of the characteristics of a self-actualized human is to be socially compassionate and possessing humanity._ **

 

It's difficult for Hannibal to cede control, it's not in his nature, but he knows when he's out of his depth. He doesn't phrase it as setting up a council, but that's what he's doing. Hannibal chooses three people - Mary, who used to be a farmer; Stephanie, who worked with kindergarteners; and Darrell, who was in the military - and tells them to talk to the others, to consult with the resident experts and come back to him with ideas. They need to start moving outside of the castle and building secondary structures. Surviving one winter on tinned food scavenged from the cities will be doable but after that they're going to need to start planting crops. More than that, they need a plan to defend the area they expand into. The more land they want to cultivate the harder it will be to protect.

He stands outside the walls of the castle enjoying the sunshine. Everyone wants to pat him on the back right now but he had to get away from all the people. Even for a few minutes. He misses his house, privacy, electricity. Hannibal pushes his hair out of his face. It's getting long, someone's going to have to cut it for him unless he tries to cut it himself. He misses running water and indoor plumbing.

Hannibal frowns. He's gotten soft.

He wonders if he hasn't always been a little soft. He's a long way away from those days in the woods. He hasn't been that desperate creature in a long time. Most of his life has been spent in boarding schools, med school, the high society of Baltimore. Serial killing hasn't prepared him for this in any way.

"Regretting your choice to become king of the world?" Will asks, smirking at him. He has his hands in the guts of a tractor and is trying to convert it to run on biodiesel.

"I'm learning to delegate," Hannibal says.

He has his doubts about Will's project. He has his doubts about a lot of things. The people living in the castle, collectively, have very few applicable skills. Hannibal told the scavenging teams to get copies of any useful how-to textbooks they can get their hands on.

He was scrubbing his hands, ready to turn a breach baby, and wondering where the hell the nurse was before he realised they didn't have any nurses in the Castello. He and Bedelia are the only ones with a medical background, and Bedelia hasn't practiced anything but psychiatry since med school. There's a girl who was a mortician-in-training, but that's about it.

"Indali just gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Ten fingers, ten toes, good lungs." Hannibal leans against the wheel of the tractor, feeling every one of his years. "We need more doctors," he says.

He's going to have to teach at least two other people - five would be ideal as a start.

"Good luck with that," Will says, sarcastic, without looking up from what he's doing. He's taken his shirt off and tucked it into the back of his jeans. His skin is pinking up in the sun. Will cut his hair, and is growing a beard, and is still unreasonably attractive.

Will's rudeness is comforting. It's mostly unchanged from how it was before. Hannibal thinks fondly about their sessions together. How easily Will trusted him then, how beautiful he was as he broke apart.

Hannibal watches the muscles in Will's back flex as he wrestles with some piece of machinery or other. The wounds from Hannibal's recreation of St. Sebastian have healed and scarred nicely. Hannibal wants to put his mouth on them, lick the salt off Will's skin. That hasn't changed either, his desire to put his hands on Will, his desire to possess him any and every way he can.

"You don't think we need more doctors?"

Will glances down at Hannibal. "I think we need as many as we can get, but who's going to want to spend that much time with you?" Will wipes his oily hands on a handkerchief and climbs down from the tractor. It's not meant to be cruel, what he says. They both know it's true. The residents of the Castello fear Hannibal. They respect him, exactly as he wanted, and they fear him.

"I could train you," Hannibal says mildly.

Will really looks at him, and Hannibal doesn't know what he sees.

Before, Hannibal felt like he had all the time in the world. Now, there's no promise of safety in this new world. No reassurance that tomorrow will be there. Hannibal catches Will's chin in his hand and kisses him. He takes every opportunity he can get.

"I take it that's a no," Hannibal says.

Will shakes his head. "Yes, it's a no." Will puts his hand on the back of Hannibal's neck and holds him still for another kiss. He is most affectionate when Hannibal does something 'good.' Delivering the baby, keeping mother and daughter alive, has earned Hannibal his approval. Hannibal recognises that positive reinforcement is a basic dog training technique, but he's not too proud to admit that the system works.

Most of the things he does that make Will happy are things he was going to do anyway. He would gain nothing by hurting Indali or her daughter. Hannibal wonders how much of it is an act Will keeps up to ensure his good behaviour. Does Will think of their relationship in terms of survival and captor bonding, or does he have genuine feelings towards Hannibal? Some of it is put on, Hannibal isn't an idiot, he can see that much, but he is fairly certain that some of it, at least, is real.

"She was breech," Hannibal says. "A midwife likely would have done a more competent job. My instinct was to give her a C-section but we don't have adequate supplies."

"And you can't bear to have a patient die," Will says. "Of course. Your ego was at stake." His hand is gentle on Hannibal's neck though, thumb rubbing along a tendon. "Remember when you came in on that organ-harvester case?"

Hannibal has an excellent memory. He remembers almost about his patient and almost everything about Will's face, his expression, in that moment.

Will smiles, a little crookedly. "That was the second time I saw you save a life," he says.

He's sweaty and warm, and Hannibal wants to push him down in the stubby grass and fuck him until he cries out loud enough for someone else to hear. Hannibal wants to carve out a space in his own body so he can tuck Will away and never let anyone else ever come near what's his again. He feels overfull with sentiment for his wonderful, brilliant Will and kisses him until some of the ache in his chest goes away.

Will lets him have the moment and then says, "You should bear in mind that anyone who's excited to learn to cut people open under your tutelage shouldn't be a doctor."

"I do know how to spot psychopaths, thank you," Hannibal says. "And kindly remember that Alana Bloom was my student."

Will sobers at that. He'd asked about Alana but the fact is, Hannibal has no idea what happened to her. She left Baltimore to be with her family before things got so bad travel was impossible, and that was the last he heard of her.

Will gently pushes him away. "Go; you have med students to recruit," he says. "People to sauté, zombies to mutilate." There's less bite to it then there would have been even a month ago.

Hannibal has a lot of things he should be doing. He'd much rather enjoy the sunshine and the quiet with Will. No rest for the wicked.

His experiments with the infected are coming to an end. Despite Abigail's insinuations that he is enjoying torturing something that can't die, Hannibal is trying to figure out how much of a threat the infected will become.

Hurting them gives him as much satisfaction as torturing an animal would: none. When he is done with them, he'll kill them and burn the bodies.

He needs to know how this strain of the disease spreads. He wants to know what percentage of people who were immune to the disease are not immune to the infectious bite of the so-called zombies. How worried do they need to be about shambling hoards?

He knows they have enough wherewithal to seek out water, that they sleep, that they don't feel pain, but they do eventually die without food or water.

As always, genius goes unappreciated.

"Why do you stay?" Will asks abruptly, dragging his thoughts away from the castle dungeons and his plans for the future.

Hannibal looks at him, bewildered. "Where else would I go?"

"What about all that bullshit about our primal selves?"

"In a civilized world, understanding our darker, animal urges was to step outside the bounds of that civilization." He gestures around them. "We are hunter-gatherers again, Will. There is no music, art, or literature being produced. Finding our civilized selves in a primal world will be equally important."

Will blows out a heavy breath. "You're really fucked up, you know that?"

"So you tell me," Hannibal says, fondly.

He catches Will giving him odd looks all night. They've got a chemistry student who set up a still and has been brewing some truly unpalatable hooch. Everyone loves it even though the taste needs to be refined, to say the least. The party to celebrate the first child born to their little band of survivors is intense. Someone starts singing and soon there's a drunken chorus belting out popular hits while everyone else drunkenly dances.

Hannibal stays as long as he must, accepts the congratulations people want to offer him for helping Indali, and retires as soon as it is polite to do so. Will watches him go, eyes bright in the firelight, shiny with drink.

That night Will comes to Hannibal's bed freshly scrubbed, hair still a little wet. His breath still smells like a still, but there's not much to be done about that. They lie in the dark, side by side, and Hannibal waits. Whatever it is Will wants to tell him, he'll get to it in his own time. Will sighs and Hannibal can hear him turning his head on the pillow.

"You were right," Will says. "About the music, and the art."

Eventually Will rolls onto his side as though he can see Hannibal without any light at all.

"Kieran and Paul both played guitar," Will says. "One of the kids has a recorder and isn't totally shit. Jen used to play violin but she was part of the group we rescued from raiders so she doesn't have it any more. Next time I'm on a scavenging run, I'll keep my eye out for music stores, bring her back a couple of violins to choose from, pick the boys up a couple of guitars. If there's room in one of the trucks maybe we could get you an upright piano."

Hannibal feels like he does when hearing an exquisite piece of music - something expansive and breathtaking inside him, a delicate ephemeral thing, trembling with each note. It's impossible to speak. It's enough to breathe and just _feel_ with every atom of his being. He reaches out and takes Will's hand. Will presses his forehead to Hannibal's shoulder.

Then he says, "You're going to get so many requests for chart music and you're not going to know any of them." When he's actually, genuinely happy, Will has an odd hiccoughing giggle that Hannibal finds unbearably charming.

Will's too drunk to get hard, but he pulls Hannibal to him, presses his thighs together and lets Hannibal fuck the tight space between them. He clumsily pets Hannibal's hair while Hannibal licks his own cum off Will's skin and then, perhaps because he is tired, or too drunk to leave again, he submits to being spooned.

Hannibal is almost asleep when Will says, quietly, "When you're not being terrible, you're surprisingly okay." Hannibal's not sure he was supposed to hear it at all. It's not exactly a declaration of love, but it will do.

True to his word, one of the convoys come back from a trip into the city with as many 'how to' books as he could carry from the library, a selection of medical textbooks, clothing, toilet paper, and an upright piano along with other sundry instruments. They also come back with damage to the trucks. The sides and hoods are pockmarked by bullet holes and scorched - Molotov cocktails from the looks of it. Four trucks went out. Only three came through the gate. Hannibal can't see Will.

Darrell hops out of the back of a flatbed. "We need to barricade the gates," he says, looking spooked. "The cultists are on the move. We got ambushed on our way back. Looks like they're not going to kill themselves. They're coming for the castle."

For a moment Hannibal feels a moment of something that is a little bit like panic, but then Will is climbing out of the passenger seat, rifle in his hands and it eases. Will slings the gun over his shoulder.

"We lost one of the trucks," he says, jaw clenched. "They had petrol bombs. We got everyone home though."

Nana is being lifted out of the third truck. She's been badly burned but everyone else is alright. Rattled, a few bruises, and one broken arm from where the truck flipped, but otherwise alright.

This, Hannibal thinks, is why they need more doctors. And adequate supplies. Most pharmacies were raided down to the shelves about two minutes after the Z-virus hit North America.

"Vinegar and honey," he snaps, leading the men caring Nana to one of the long tables inside. "Boil water, bring me plastic wrap and scissors. And something for her to bite down on."

He cuts her clothing off while the water cools enough for him to scrub his hands and arms. The burns are mostly second degree but there are a few blackened third degree patches. He glares at the people standing around watching.

"We are about to come under siege. Go be useful!"

Hannibal makes sure Nana can see him. "This will hurt. Pain is good, it means the burns are less severe."

She's crying, silently, fingers clenched into fists. "If I die," she says. "Please don't eat me."

"You won't die," Hannibal says. "I'm an excellent doctor."

He cleans the wounds with vinegar and covers them in honey, wraps the whole mess in plastic wrap and then there is nothing more he is able to do. He gives her some of their precious supply of painkillers and has her carried to her bed.

By the time Hannibal has set the broken arm, everyone has gathered in the courtyard and are arming themselves. Some days Hannibal wonders if he had a break from reality and has imagined this whole thing. It doesn't seem likely, but when he's looking down at a rag-tag bunch of men and women in chain and plate mail, armed with polearms and honest-to-god swords, he does wonder.

Will, Abigail, Darrell, and Judy are the four who know most about weapons. They look grim. Hannibal places himself between Abigail and Darrell. Judy, he knows, does not like him too close to her, and he has learned to give Will his space. The longer the leash, the more often Will finds it in himself to seek Hannibal out. He reacts badly to being crowded, these days.

"They're going to burn the doors off," Darrell says. "It's the easiest way in."

"It's the only way in," Judy says. "Margot and I bricked up the emergency exits last week. Three layers of brick with cement dug in between them."

"So there's only one way out," Will says. "That sounded like a good idea?"

Judy glares at him. "Yeah, actually, it did. We need to construct a tunnel out, but we can't start one from anywhere but the dungeon and, well..." She scrubs a hand over her face. "This isn't the time."

Hannibal stares down at a rather crude drawing of the castle. If they all survive this, he'll need to actually sketch out some blueprints so they can better design their defences. There's something more at play, having only one way in or out. Judy guiltily catches his eye. Something else is going on here.

Darrell taps the image of the front gates. "They'll pry the metal away and set fire to the door. It'll take a while for it to burn through, but we can't reliably put out a fire from the far side. It doesn't look like they have any way to get over the walls, or to fling stuff over at us, but who knows."

"A half-decent slingshot could get firebombs over the wall," Judy says. "If we drop shit down on them they'll block our shots with that tortoise thing they've built, then they'll come in the front and try to overrun us."

"They had guns, firebombs, crossbows..." Abigail looks up at their surroundings. "We can put sharp shooters up there, and there," she says, pointing. "They'll bottleneck as they come through the doors. At least we can pick a few of them off."

Judy rolls her head on her neck. "Two things, we actually have armour and they don't. And also, they have shotguns. They'll have to reload. We won't."

It's all rather far outside Hannibal's knowledge set.

"Let them think we'll barricade them out," he says. We'll open the gates and take them off guard. Post as many shooters as you can. Everyone else will have to melee."

He leaves the details to the others, but Will follows him to his room, frowning as he strips down and begins dressing again in the samurai armour his Lady aunt gave him. He brought it with him from Paris, to Johns Hopkins, to his house, and now to this castle. It is not the first time he has used the swords.

Will helps him tie the armour on. "We're totally fucked, right?" he says.

"Perhaps," Hannibal agrees. "But I have another surprise."

The four strongest men in the group drag Hannibal's two zombies up onto the battlements in chains. They won't do a whole lot of damage, but dropping them down on the attackers will certainly alarm the cultists.

Down in the courtyard, some bright spark has put together a paste of berries, redroot, and beets, and everyone is painting their faces - like masks, in stripes and handprints - slicking back their hair, marking their clothing.

There's something fierce in his people. Something ancient and dark has been forced out of them to combat their fear. They look at him with their faces painted blood red, courage screwed to the sticking place. He has seen people fight with strength they didn't know they had to survive. His people will do well.

Bedelia puts a hand on his arm. "Are you sure?" she asks. She sounds like she's questioning the validity of her own existence. "Because this seems...slightly insane."

Hannibal walks through the crowd, the colonists parting around him like water around a stone. He dips one hand in the paste and smears it across his mouth and chin. Will is up on the battlements with a rifle. Hannibal can feel the sight on him and he winks. He can't see Will's disgruntled expression, but the gun swings in another direction.

The cultists arrive with a rattle of shotguns, chanting some prayer.

Hannibal waits at the front of the crowd. He can feel his heart rate picking up. This might actually be an insane idea but the anticipation uncurls in him. He's never been in a melee before.

"Whose castle?" someone shouts from the battlements; one of the younger men who turned out to be pretty good with a rifle.

"Our castle!" the others shout back, over the sound of the cultists.

There's a screeching of metal and then the door starts to smoke.

"I said, whose castle!"

"Our castle!"

"Whose home?"

"Our home!"

"Whose dinner?"

There's something of a shocked pause. Then one of the women throws her head back and screams. It sets the others off. They stamp their feet and slam the butts of their spears on the ground, they shout, scream, and howl, wordless and primal. When the young man on the battlements cries out again, "Whose dinner?" the reply comes easily. "Our dinner!"

Don't Cannibals Open Inside, indeed, Hannibal thinks.

Hannibal draws his sword and one of his knives free and nods to the men on the battlements. There's heavy thumping sounds and the cultists shout in surprise as the zombies attack their men. he can hear several terrified screams cut short before shots start to go off and Hannibal gestures at the two kids manning the doors.

They throw open the burning doors and both parties come face to face.

Their adversaries were not expecting them to come out. They hesitate and the rifles on the battlements go off with a series of sharp cracks. Then H*annibal throws his knife and it strikes a man in the throat. As though that was some sort of signal, everyone pours out of the castle and into the melee.

Hannibal remembers it in snatches. Screams of battle drowning out the screams of the wounded. The way the katana sliced through skin and flesh. Abigail on the battlements with her rifle, picking off cultists with precision. Will come down to join in the fray, spattered with blood like he was the day he killed Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He has a sword he's using like a baseball bat, light shining off the chainmail shirt he's wearing. Hannibal will draw that image later, Will not as a saint, but as an avenging angel, smiting the enemies of the people.

When it's all over Hannibal watches as his people drag captives into the courtyard and slit their throats. Will leans against the wall next to him, catching his breath, sweat dripping clean trails through the blood on his face and neck. He's strained his shoulder, Hannibal can tell.

Judy pushes through the crowd. "We've got three dead, five more shot, three cases of friendly stab, and a shitload of broken fingers and sprained wrists. Probably some bruised and cracked ribs."

Will opens his eyes. His expression is hard to read. "Go save some lives," he says. "I can deal with this."

A slender woman with wide eyes and long dark hair marches up to him. She's shaking with adrenaline and there's a lot of blood on her. "I'll learn," she says. "Teach me." Her brother is one of the dead. His throat had been slashed. The blood on Margot looks a lot like she was standing in front of someone when she cut their throat.

Hannibal glances at Judy who nods almost imperceptibly. He'll have to inquire later what, exactly, is going on with her friend Margot, but now is not the time.

He gets four volunteers, including the mortician and the woman who killed her brother.

"You prioritize," Hannibal says, gesturing at the wounded as his doctors in training wash their hands. "Decide who is going to die if you don't operate right this second against who might die anyway."

One of the gunshots was a through-and-through. Hannibal removes two bullets, sews up three stab wounds, lets the mortician remove one of the bullets and the fifth man dies. He spends the rest of the evening teaching people how to apply bandages and splints.

By the time he's washed off the blood and the remains of the stain from his face, it's night and he's actually tired. The dead cultists have been butchered, everyone is drunk, and they leap around a fire as Jen pulls heavy metal out of her violin and others beat out the rhythm on their thighs.

Hannibal does three shots of hooch in a row even though Bedelia rolls her eyes at him. He built this, he pulled something beautiful and terrible out of these people. He doesn't dance, but he watches, feeling the liquor burn in his stomach. Will comes out of the dark and pulls him away from the party.

"You don't even know," Will says, shoving at Hannibal's clothing as he drags him through the hallways to Hannibal's room. "You don't even care." He pulls Hannibal's hair and bites at his mouth, fierce and lovely. "All the people you saved today..."

Will shoves him down on his back and crawls up over him. He spills something cool and viscous over them both, hands still shaky with adrenaline, and slicks his cock. He gets one elbow under Hannibal's knee to haul his leg up and back. Their eyes meet in the flicker of a lone candle. Hannibal can feel himself smiling. Will groans like he's in pain and pushes into Hannibal without any preamble.

Hannibal bites him hard enough to draw blood and Will yanks his head back by the hair until his body arches between the two points. He jerks Hannibal's cock as he forces a space open for himself inside of Hannibal. he goes slowly, but the stretch is intense, all-consuming. Hannibal takes Will into himself, both of them smelling of fire and blood. It's more than fucking, it's like they're fighting, like Will is surrendering at last, all at the same time. 

"You win," Will snarls into his throat. "Do you understand that? You have me."

Hannibal feels like the king they've made him. He feels like a god.

Afterwards, Will trails sleepily after him to the trucks and sits with him under the stars. Hannibal plays Schumann's Fantasie op. 17 in C major for him on the upright. He lets the love he feels, delicate and ephemeral, flow out into the night for everyone to hear until Will uncurls from where he sits and takes Hannibal back to bed. For a while Hannibal lies awake, arms around Will, at the centre of this world he's made for them both. And then he too sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [this is the piece Hannibal plays for Will](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5cmBah0F20)


End file.
